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Yes, Folks... It's Finally Here!

It's Dara's long-awaited, oft-debated Subjective Reality book was just uploaded today! The ebook is now available & the paperback requires a bit more time to make it through the belly of the beast and onto Amazon, but it should be up in the next couple of days.

In the Meantime, Here's a Free Sample Chapter!

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THE MEANING-DRIVEN LIFE

It is all about You – but not the
little ego you. Rather, life is all
about connecting with the bigger You – your Inner Self. This is the journey of all spiritual quests
and the Ultimate Goal of all seeking: to find and unite with the larger part of
your Self that has always been one with the Universe – the part of yourself
unlimited by circumstances and fears.

The Inner Self is the source of
all meaning and true purpose in life.
Find it, and you know who you are and why you are here. Without it, you are alone and helpless in a
hostile world.

The default world can give you
purpose. It can give you enough mindless
busywork and daily mandatory routines to spend a whole life without a free
moment. But the default world cannot
give you meaning. For meaning is created
subjectively, inside each of us.

We all have our own unique,
individual perceptions and expressions.
And when we withhold those unique perceptions and expressions in
conformity to the purposes of the world, we deny both the Universe and our
brother and sister humans the divine expression we were created to embody.

There must be the possibility of
transcendence for life to make sense to me.
Without a concept of consciousness surpassing the limitations and
default settings of biology, creation seems pointless and random. In other words, without meaning. If all I have to live for is the perpetuation
of biological functions in myself and others, and all the simian politics that
goes with our primate heritage, then I don’t want to play.

I have always felt that there was
a lot more to me than is manifest here in this little fuzzy animal body, and
more beauty and knowingness in me, than contained within the 3.5 pounds of grey
jelly in my skull. The affairs of
personal, professional and national politics and finances are not sufficient to
give meaning to life. For me, happiness
is impossible without meaning.

Years ago, when divorcing from my
first husband, I made a conscious decision that any time there was a choice to
be made that, meaning would be my primary criteria. Any time I had to choose between two or more
options, I resolved to always choose the option which had the most resonance
for me personally. I have never
regretted that decision, although it has taken me down some very strange paths!

The conscious transcending of
biology (aka Waking Up, Switching Off the Autopilot, Enlightenment, Increasing
Awareness, Evolving, etc) seems to me the most important thing we can devote
our lives to. While tending to family
and career is often commendable, it pales in comparison to the importance of
waking up.

But this awakening is
tremendously difficult in our present day consumer culture, because the monkey
mind (lower brain functions) are so easily distracted and entranced, and then
autopilot takes over the whole mechanism, instead of being used as a vital part
of a much larger and more complex system.
Autopilot (habits, and entranced repetitive behaviors) is useful in its
place, but when one acts from habits and entranced patterns picked up randomly
and without consideration or intention, then one is at the mercy of external
and circumstantial forces with no way to assert or retain conscious direction.

These habits and entranced
behavior patterns are the product of the older, more “reptilian” parts of the
brain. Our sense of self-consciousness
is believed by researchers to be housed in the neo-cortex, the most evolutionarily
recent development of our brains. These
older structures in the brain (sometimes called the “Lizard Brain”) can exert
considerable influence on our personal behavior and unfolding, especially if
certain structures and capacities in the brain are not fully developed.

Hence, we often find ourselves
“highjacked” by emotions or thoughts based on lower brain functions, such as
low self-esteem, fear, perceived self-preservation or bodily desires, such as
lust, hunger and obsession, which prevent us from achieving the clarity
necessary for accessing our higher brain functions.

There are some researchers and
commentators on the human condition who believe we have gone astray from our
evolutionary path and are now going up a possible dead end. Others believe we are just ‘going through a
difficult phase’ in our evolutionary development, that we will soon
outgrow.

Either way, it seems clear to me
that we must assert conscious intention to get us out of the current political,
cultural and environmental messes we have collectively created through the
unthinking following of the promptings of our lower selves.

While living in the most
privileged society on the planet, many of us feel unfulfilled, frustrated and
trapped in lives we did not want to have, but ended up with either by default
or by mistake. We sometimes feel cheated
out of an unknown life we somehow ‘should’ have had – that we are not allowed
to express our true selves due to the limits placed on us by others or by our
own fears.

Many spiritual teachers and
traditions tell us that it is not our failures that we fear, rather, it is our
greatness which we are frightened to let show.
But this need not be our fate. We
can choose to allow our Deeper Self to inject meaning and purpose into our
existence. But it takes time and
patience to undo a lifetime of unconscious habits and decisions.

Like with developing our physical
muscles, we can develop the capacities and strengths of our conscious minds to
resist the tendency to live on autopilot, instead of using it judiciously to
achieve our intentions and goals.

As G.I. Gurdjieff noted, a
certain amount of psychic momentum is required in order to break the
entrancement of the lower brain structures.
This momentum is built through the use of positive, intentional habits
(in the philosophical field of Virtue Ethics,
these are called virtuous habits) because human will power is
insufficient when undeveloped. Will
power is a limited resource that requires frequent re-charging (somewhat like
my cell phone!). Good habits can often
carry us even when our will power is weak.
But the question then arises:
what kinds of habits are necessary to transcendence?

In order for consciousness to
transcend biology, we must attain the habits of expanded consciousness: regular
meditation and contemplation (two different things), intentional creative
pursuits and the regular exposure to what Gurjieff called “conscious material,”
that is, literature and art created consciously in a space of intentionally
increased awareness.

So what is this consciousness and
what is it’s goal?

Consciousness is that within you
that knows and knows that it knows. It
is that continuity of awareness that remains untouched through all of the many
phases, changes and circumstances of our lives.

If we are truly embodied spiritual
creatures (as I believe we are), then why did we come here? Surely it was not merely to consume,
reproduce and die. The ecology of nature
would argue against such a cosmic waste of potential. If we are truly aspects of divinity, then in
order for our existence to have meaning, we must have come here to this plane
of existence in order to fulfill a divine mission.

So, as spirits embodied, it seems
our mission is to recognize our position and to attain the habit of identifying
with the eternal aspects of ourselves, rather than limiting our awareness to
the ephemeral aspects associated with biological survival and reproduction.

But this is difficult to
accomplish, because our minds are unaccustomed to holding fixed thoughts and
perceptions for very long. The ephemeral
conditioning of biology entrances us with an ever-changing set of variables we
must navigate. I call this being
“Velcro-ed™.”

It is very easy to forget about
the option of seeing life from a larger (divine) context. It is easy to get sucked into two-dimensional
thinking of established neural patterns (i.e. paths of least resistance) rather
than to look for the broadest perspective you can handle. It is much easier to be self-protective,
rather than inclusive.

Our brains are biologically conditioned
to run on autopilot (i.e. the path of least resistance), as well as genetically
pre-disposed towards certain habits and configurations. But just because our
autopilot has certain default settings that we may not like, that does not mean
we are doomed forever by biological determinism – unless we refuse to claim the
power of our consciousness to rise above and re-set the defaults on our
autopilot to more agreeable settings.

Again, this is not a quick or
easy task, but it appears to be necessary for humanity to move forward as a
species, as well as for individuals to move forwards in their own personal
journeys.

Without transcending our
biological drives, humanity is locked into a zero-sum game of dwindling
resources and expanding populations. Only
the expansion of consciousness can get us out of inevitable conflict and
suffering. Expanded horizons and vision
can help us to navigate the turmoil of embodiment, avoiding foreseeable crashes
and enabling unimpeded progress.
Unleashed divine creativity imagines new solutions and inspired
combinations to our problems. Third and
even fourth dimensional thinking lifts us up out of duality and gives us wider
understanding – imparts the vision to encompass both divinity and biology
simultaneously.

We are conditioned by biology
from the get-go – our sex, the efficiency and completeness of our organs and
bodily systems all impact the quality and content of our lived experience. If we are born into a severely malfunctioning
or handicapped body, our existence will primarily focus on surviving that
handicap or dysfunction. If we become
injured, diseased or aged, our lives often become focused on dealing with the
consequences of these conditions.

But despite the narrowing of
focus to the biological, we still have Free Will in how to understand our
conditioned life – we can choose to see our physical conditions as a blessing
or a curse. I am reminded of the grace
and spirituality with which actor Christopher Reeve embodied after his severe
spinal cord injury, which paralyzed him from the chest down and eventually
ended his life after several years of brave struggle. He truly was a super-man, although he could
no longer even walk or breathe unassisted, much less fly.

We get to decide whether life is
something we endure or something we enjoy.
Our consciousness orients our emotional and intellectual and spiritual
responses to the limitations imposed by embodiment.

All religion points away from
embodiment to identification with spirit (consciousness). Many religions tend towards asceticism – the
rejection and chastising of the body, in the belief that mortification of the
flesh automatically leads to identification with consciousness – but this is
not necessarily true.

Asceticism can succeed if the
aspirant can let go of his identification with the body and shift his sense of
self to include his own Inner Self. But
all too often, instead what is engendered is a hatred and rejection of the
biological element of our being, setting up the conditions vibrationally for
obsession, future disease and accidents.

Culture further deepens our
disdain of the biological in numerous ways: by holding up unachievable images
of beauty and physical configurations; by over-sexualizing advertising; through
the healthcare and insurance industry’s stranglehold on mainstream conceptions
of health and illness… These are just a few of the ways our culture forces us
to identify with our bodies, but then sets up barriers to our acceptance of our
bodily beingness.

We fear our bodies’ power to
shape our experiences because we do not understand what we are existentially
and how our consciousness relates to our bodies. On one hand, we are taught by culture that we
ARE our bodies and this one is all we get.
But our predominant religions tell us we are NOT our bodies and must
seek salvation. With the decline in
religion as a real live spiritual power (not merely a political power) in most
postmodern Westerners’ lives, we have come to focus on our bodies as much more
than a game avatar, rather, we have come to believe that the body is our
Self. Nowadays, we are taught that we as
a species are limited and conditioned by our bodies.

Yet how we interpret and express
inside those conditions is entirely up to us.
Biology may “throw” us into unchosen circumstances, but how we orient
and respond is an expression of our consciousness. We may be born into a failing and feeble
body, such as physicist Stephen Hawking was, but, like Hawking, we can choose
to transcend the conditions imposed by biology through the exercise of
consciousness.

Consciousness is always a choice – never a
default.

It’s all about what part/image of
yourself you identify with. If you
believe you ARE a body, then your identity is bound by biology. If you identify with an eternal/divine
aspect, you transcend genetic predisposition, disease and accident. Choice of destiny then becomes possible, but
as long as we identify with our bodies, we are fated to be limited by
them.

It’s easy to get caught up in the
roller coaster ride of physical embodiment:
it’s so distracting, so entertaining, so exasperatingly PRESENT.

It is easy to lose your
perspective amidst the constant swirling of postmodern life. But it is precisely this constant busy-ness
that keeps us from identifying with the
larger context of the Deep Self. Depth
of self-knowing requires both conscious choice and stillness. The busy distracted monkey mind cannot tune
into the higher frequencies of the Expanded Self.

We must still our minds and allow
the swirling conceptual dust to settle down in order to establish contact with
the Larger Self. But once the mind IS
trained to settle down, the Larger Self is readily available to access at any
and all times. So, it’s a matter of both
techniques (such as the meditations and exercises in this book) plus
remembering to use your techniques while in the thick of the bio-swirling.

From an existential point of
view, we exist in a profound state of ignorance – we know very little about the
origins and possible purpose of the universe, of life and of ourselves. We
don’t know why we are born or what happens after we die. We don’t know if this is an intended or
random universe.

Religion was created to deal with
the psychological pain and isolation of this ignorance. Religion is learned, although the
religious/spiritual impulse is innate and seems to be hardwired in. (See:
Newberg, Why God Won’t Go Away) How that spiritual impulse is interpreted is
both subjective and cultural. We
interpret our own spiritual impulses according to our social conditioning –
both inherited and chosen. (“Once a
Catholic, always a Catholic/recovering Catholic.”)

We become fixated and distracted
by the external world because it is loud and explicit. The internal world is subtle and silent. Some fear the silence, for they fear
confronting themselves without dilution.
They fear discovering inadequacy, hypocrisy or cruelty. So they choose to remain in ignorance, rather
than risk learning something about themselves and the universe that they may not
like. Instead, they cling to age-old,
worn out beliefs in the hopes of getting some real mileage from the old forms
before they collapse. It is often much easier emotionally to look outside,
rather than inside.

But inside is where all the
miracles take place.

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